Practicing When You Can't Practice

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For an entire month I was not able to keep up my regular piano practice schedule. I had other commitments, between aikido, music gigs and the omni-present day job, that disrupted my little routine.

It was a little stressful, because musicians are conditioned from a very early age:

  • You must practice every day!
  • There is always someone who is better than you because they practiced more!
  • If you are sitting down right now, relaxing and enjoying yourself, you shouldn't, because You Should Be Practicing!!!!

(Even as I am writing this, a little voice is telling me that I should be practicing instead.)

When I came back to my piano, I realized that I had made progress nevertheless. I hope I can even say I have learned something from this, and maybe my experience can be informative in some way to you, dear reader...
  1. I paused in playing music because I was practicing a lot of aikido. But when I came back I found that the "burst" in aikido really helped my piano playing. When I had trouble with a passage or an idea, I instinctively relaxed instead of tensing, resulting in: good sounds! I've been doing this aikido training for many years. But the sudden uptick in intensity seemed to have a corresponding effect on my body in relationship to playing.
  2. I paused in practicing jazz because I was preparing for a couple of folk/pop gigs. I worked to get ready for these gigs, but the music is much less complex. My expectation was that spending 2 weeks practicing simple tunes with 5 chords would set my jazz playing back, or at the very least put it on hold. In fact, playing less complex music for a while really helped my jazz playing. Immersing myself in simple harmony, letting go of all the different scales, color tones and altered notes actually grounded me so that when I came back to playing jazz again, the complex stuff made sense in a way it hadn't before.
  3. The third and final "learning" was that I actually had not put my practicing on pause! I stole 10 minutes here and there, waiting for the kettle to boil, or when I was tired of playing folk tunes, or just a few minutes before running out the door to work. I would play an exercise or a tune, or improvise a little. It wasn't my normal concentrated practice but it was still very useful! I approached the piano in a spirit of play, and I approached it as a release, as something I looked forward to, not a drudgery. There was focus, there was listening, there was understanding and learning taking place.  I renewed my desire always to approach the piano (or any instrument, or anything I do because I love doing it) in that same spirit.



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